The recent revelations that a local police department used a minor to help bring down an area drug dealer elicits memories of a situation from almost 30 years ago when a federal narcotics task force took a 14-year old Richard Wershe and helped turn him into the iconic "White Boy Rick."

A one-time resident of Oakland County, Wershe was recruited out of eighth grade and sent into the treacherous Detroit drug underworld as a paid informant between the ages of 14 and 16 during the 1980s.

Building a headline-grabbing reputation on the government's dime - based primarily on the media and the public's fascination with his race and young age - Wershe's relationship with the federal task force made up of FBI and DEA agents and Detroit Police Department officers concluded in 1986.

Less than a year later, in May 1987 at age 17, he was arrested for possession and intent to distribute eight kilos of cocaine and sentenced to life in state prison.

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Back in April, it was uncovered that the Lake Orion Police Department utilized a 14-year old boy as its primary proxy in laying the ground work for the bust of Edward Mark Watkins, an alleged marijuana peddler and convicted felon from Southfield with a lengthy criminal rap sheet.

In an interview with The Oakland Press expressing his displeasure, the boy's father, who chose not to be identified by name, said that he was upset with the Lake Orion police for "playing cops and robbers" with my his son and never informing him of the situation nor requesting his permission.

Friends with Watkins' girlfriend's daughter, the boy made a "controlled buy" of marijuana from Watkins, 35, in a Lake Orion parking lot. Immediately following the transaction, Watkins was arrested by police offers staking out the scene and subsequently charged with drug dealing.

It was the boy's mother who contacted authorities and allowed him to be used in the sting operation.

Similarly, Wershe's entre into working with the law at such a young age was through a parent -- his father, Richard Wershe, Sr, a one-time federal informant in the 1970s and 80s who would bring his son along on meetings with his contacts in the FBI and Detroit Police Department.

The undercover work that the younger Wershe performed on behalf of the government in the local drug trade started out small during the early summer after he graduated from middle school and slowly built up to a day-in-day-out endeavor, where he was eventually shot and almost died and then wound up dropping out of high school.

Wershe's assertions that he was put to work in "mole status" by the government as a minor are confirmed in his parole file by former members of the task force, who also recount the various arrests and convictions the information he provided resulted in. Between 1991 and 2003, Wershe went back to work for the government while incarcerated and aided in a number of additional investigations, including helping break-up a ring of corrupt Detroit police officers that were running a protection racket for area drug transactions.

Despite his cooperation, he's been denied parole three times in the past decade. Even though he has never been linked to any violent crimes and only has a single drug conviction on his adult record, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office does not support Wershe's release from behind bars.

About to turn 44 (his birthday is this month), he won't go up for parole again until 2017.

There are those that believe Wershe's trouble gaining his freedom spawns from his suspected teaming with law enforcement when he was a boy and then his reteaming with the government as an adult.

"This is third-world country-type stuff," said Greg Schwarz, a former FBI agent that was assigned to the Detroit Bureau and champions Wershe's cause. "The kind of reprehensible nonsense going on with Rick Wershe's parole is just horrible. A man has lost the better portion of his life because of politics."

Schwarz looks in the direction of Wayne County when assessing possible blame.

"I sense that there are certain powers that be in the Wayne County bureaucracy that hope he never sees the light of day," he said. "His story getting out there could really undermine a lot of interests. And then there are the cops he sent away. There are quite a few people in law enforcement over there that saw their buddies get put in jail because of him. All that shouldn't matter, but apparently that's all that matters when it comes to his situation."

"Where is the outrage, where is the justice?," he said. "Judging by this case we seem perfectly okay with our government just plucking kids out of school, having them infiltrate drug gangs on the premise that the means justifies the ends, and then after we've sucked all we can from them, simply throwing them in a cage and letting them rot the rest of their lives away. It's a disgusting travesty."

Musili and his high-profile client are both disturbed by what recently happened in Lake Orion.

"You have to draw a line and obviously there are still people in law enforcement that are willing to cross it," Musilli said. "When you allow the police to exploit our youth, for whatever reason, you're treading on some very dangerous, morally quesionable ground."

Wershe doesn't want anyone to end up where he is.

"I know first-hand how something like that can balloon out of control," he said of the incident. "When you're a kid, you don't know any better, so you go along thinking you're doing the right thing. It robs you of your innocence though and can open doors you don't want to open. My situation was obviously a lot more severe than this one, but once you take the first step, the second and third step becomes much easier and then you're where I'm at"

The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office has stated that it doesn't condone the tactics of the Lake Orion police. Lake Orion Police Chief Jerry Narsh has said that the situation is "not common," however the result of "extenuating circumstances."

Living in a house at the corner of 11 Mile Road and Evergreen roads in Southfield in his final year of freedom, Wershe was charismatic and showy, embedding himself as a cultural icon of his era in his short reign as a teenage drug-dealing prodigy, even immortalized in lyrics from Detroit music star Kid Rock in a 1993 song,"Back from the dead."

Scott M. Burnstein's new book, "The Detroit True Crime Chronicles -- Murder and Mayhem in the Motor City," is currently available in stores and on line everywhere.